Currency Rate in Pakistan: US Dollar, UK Pound, Saudi Riyal, UAE Dirham - 08 January 2020

 

Following were the closing rates of the US Dollar, Saudi Riyal, UK Pound, UAE Dirham and other foreign currencies in Pakistan on the date of January 08, 2020. CURRENCY LOW RATE HIGH RATE US DOLLAR (INTER BANK) 155.00 155.10 US DOLLAR (CASH FREE MARKET) 155.40 155.80 SAUDI RIYAL 41.25 41.55 UAE DIRHAM 42.25 42.55 EURO 172.50 174.00 UK POUND 203.00 204.80 JAPANESE YEN 1.41792 1.43792 AUSTRALIAN DOLLAR 106.00 107.50 CANADIAN DOLLAR 119.00 120.50 KUWAITI DINAR 510.20 510.30 OMANI RIYAL 401.74 401.84 IRANI RIYAL 0.0010 0.0015 INDIAN RUPEE 1.95 2.15 MALAYSIAN RINGIT 37.00 38.30 AFGHANI RUPEE 1.60 1.95 CHINESE YUAN 21.80 22.80 The above information is according to the Forex Association of Pakistan.

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UAE Israel agreement followed many years of discreet talks

  Secret talks and quiet ties that’s what paved the way for last week’s deal between the United Arab Emirates and Israel to normalise relations.

 Touted by US President Donald Trump as a major Mideast breakthrough, the agreement was in fact the culmination of more than a decade of quiet links rooted in frenzied opposition to Iran that predated Trump and even Barack Obama, as well as Trump’s avowed goal to undo his predecessor’s Middle East legacy. And the deal leaves behind what had been a cornerstone of US policy in the region: resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The effort to achieve that goal picked up speed 17 months ago at a US-led conference in Warsaw, according to officials involved. That February 2019 meeting, originally conceived as an anti-Iran gathering, morphed into a broader Mideast security endeavour after European objections to its agenda. Many countries opted not to send their top diplomats, and Russia, China and the Palestinians skipped it entirely. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attended, however, as did the foreign ministers of key Arab states. At the summit, diplomats from Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain spoke of the threat Iran posed to their security and its use of Shia proxies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. They stressed that confronting Iran had become the top priority  ahead of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — in comments appearing in leaked video, whose authenticity was confirmed by a US official who attended the gathering. Netanyahu followed, echoing similar concerns. “Iran was very high on the agenda in Warsaw because Iran’s foreign policy is the biggest driver of instability in today’s Middle East,” the US special envoy for Iran, Brian Hook, told The Associated Press. Four months after the summit, a secret meeting between the UAE and Israel took place on June 17, 2019, in Washington. The trilateral focused on regional, cyber and maritime security, as well as diplomatic coordination and disrupting terror finance, according to a US official who participated but was not authorised to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. More meetings followed in the US, Israel and the UAE capital of Abu Dhabi, culminating in Thursday’s Trump announcement that his administration had brokered a deal between Israel and the UAE to establish diplomatic relations and exchange embassies. The UAE said Israel also agreed to halt its controversial plans to annex large areas of the occupied West Bank sought by the Palestinians. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, told White House reporters that discussions for the deal took place over the past year and a half. “Look, at the end of the day, it’s an inevitability, right?” Kushner said, adding later: “No Israeli has ever killed an Emirati, right? There’s not that hatred between the people.” To be sure, Israel and the UAE have never fought each other in war and do not share borders. Still, the agreement was far more warmly welcomed in Israel than the UAE, where the public has long viewed Israel with suspicion. But criticism has been muted, in part because of government suppression of free speech. The UAE, composed of seven emirates run by hereditary rulers led by Abu Dhabi, will be only the third Arab nation, after Egypt and Jordan, to have full ties with Israel. By doing so, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed laid a path for countries like Morocco, Bahrain, Oman or Sudan to potentially follow. There are many, though, who shun any Arab embrace of Israel. To the Palestinians, who say they had no prior notice of the deal, the UAE turned its back on the longstanding Arab consensus that recognition of Israel can only come after Israeli concessions in peace talks lead to the creation of a Palestinian state. “I think the UAE is least beholden to these old formulas of solidarity ... which gives them more strategic flexibility,” said Kristin Smith Diwan, a scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. “There’s no question that among the broader Arab and Gulf public, this will be a very unpopular move,” she said, adding that the agreement also leaves the UAE vulnerable to whatever decisions Israel makes in the future. For the UAE, however, the calculus to build relations with Israel carries a number of strategic advantages beyond countering Iran and suspending West Bank annexation. Through Israel, the UAE can build stronger ties with both Republicans and Democrats — a crucial hedge considering the uncertainty of Trump’s reelection chances against former Vice President Joe Biden in November’s US presidential elections. Another impetus was the perception among Arab Gulf states that US dependability had waned, from the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran, to Trump’s unpredictability in foreign policy. Their views on the matter have been reflected in state-linked newspaper columns and in quiet grumbling at private gatherings. Saudi Arabia and the UAE were also barred by Congress from purchasing billions of dollars in US weapons due to the humanitarian toll of their war in Yemen, before Trump vetoed the measures. “Their first preference is to have the United States heavily involved in the Middle East as their primary ally. If they can’t get that, which ... under Trump they absolutely cannot, then they’re going for second best, and Israel is second best,” said Kenneth Pollack, a former CIA analyst and now Mideast expert at the American Enterprise Institute. The Saudis and Emiratis want to build up military strength and want the US to give them more freedom of manoeuvre in places like Libya, Yemen and the Horn of Africa. With a stronger Emirati-Israeli alliance, “they can count on the Israelis to also make that case in Washington,” Pollack said. Hook argues it was the Trump administration’s aggressive Iran policy and decision to withdraw the US from the nuclear accord that helped seal the latest deal. “Israel and UAE felt betrayed by Obama’s Iran strategy. With us, they knew we stood with our allies and partners, and that trust was a critical factor in getting this peace agreement done,” said Hook, who was involved in the trilateral talks. At a time when the coronavirus pandemic has eroded vital oil and tourism revenue, the UAE will look to its ties with Israel to deepen trade links, security cooperation and technology sharing. Already, the UAE has deployed Israeli spyware against dissidents, according to a lawsuit brought against the company in Israel. UAE efforts to seek better ties with Israel as a means of improving its standing in Washington dates back to 2006, according to Sigurd Neubauer, author of the book “The Gulf Region and Israel: Old Struggles, New Alliances.” It began with a public-relations crisis over Dubai port operator DP World’s failed bid to manage major ports in the US. The longtime UAE ambassador to the US, Yousef Al-Otaiba, held his first meeting with an Israeli official in 2008 and a diplomatic channel was established to focus on Iran, Neubauer said. The relationship hit a snag in 2010 when the UAE accused Israeli Mossad operatives of assassinating Hamas figure Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel. Nearly a decade later, an Israeli minister stood in Abu Dhabi and sang her country’s national anthem at a judo competition, shook hands warmly with Emirati officials and toured the emirate’s grand mosque in a public spectacle of warming ties. In January, when Trump unveiled his Mideast plan  which was rejected by the Palestinians the ambassadors of the UAE, Bahrain and Oman attended the White House ceremony, which featured Netanyahu. Senior Emirati diplomat Anwar Gargash said the relationship with Israel grew “organically” over the last 15 years or so. “Through engagement with the Trump administration, the idea ... developed and percolated, and it was right to do it,” he said

Floods in Delhi as South Asia monsoon toll rises to nearly 1,300

 Heavy monsoon rains lashed New Delhi on Wednesday, inundating roads and piling on misery for commuters in the chaotic Indian capital, as the death toll from the annual deluge across South Asia rose to nearly 1,300. 

 The monsoon is vital to the densely populated region, revitalising land and waterways amid scorching summers. But it also causes widespread death and destruction. In New Delhi, commuters battled through knee-deep waters and cars and buses were submerged as torrential rains added to traffic woes in the city of 20 million. At a museum in Jaipur in the mostly desert state of Rajasthan, staff told AFP how they were forced to smash open a glass display case containing a 2,300 year-old Egyptian mummy in order to save it from rainwater flooding the ground floor.“The workers broke the glass of the box and took the mummy out” last Friday after water levels started rising, Albert Hall Museum's superintendent Rakesh Cholak said. “The case of the coffin got a little wet but we've put it out to dry too.” The torrid conditions in recent days also hit India's northern and eastern states. Across India, 847 people have died this season, the home ministry said. In the southwestern state of Kerala, the death toll from a single landslide rose to 61 on Wednesday, with nine people still missing, an official said. In India's poorest state Bihar, eight million people have been hit by the floods, with thousands of displaced people sleeping on embankments and highways amid a shortage of relief camps.

Sleeping on roads This year's rains have also come in the wake of the economic devastation wrought by the coronavirus pandemic, with the loss of crops across flood-affected areas a further blow to farmers and rural communities. In Bangladesh, 226 people have died so far with 40 per cent of the country underwater after torrential rain caused rivers to burst their banks and inundate villages. “In terms of duration it was the second-worst floods in the country's history,” said Arifuzzaman Bhuyan, the head of Bangladesh's Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre. More than six million people have had their homes damaged by the floods, and tens of thousands of villagers remain in shelters, an official from Bangladesh's disaster management ministry told AFP. Others are sleeping in shanties built on roads on higher ground, unable to return home to their submerged homes. In flood-hit Rupangar village outside the capital Dhaka, Shahanara Begum said she has been living on the road with her family for more than a month. “It seems like bad luck doesn't leave us. Wherever we go, floodwater follows us,” the 50-year-old told AFP on Wednesday. “It is very insecure to live on the road but we don't have a choice most of our food stocks and clothes are already ruined,” added 70-year-old Maya Saha. In Nepal, 218 people have died and 69 are missing from landslides and floods since mid-June when the monsoon began. In the latest incident early on Wednesday, six bodies were recovered and 11 people were missing after a flood swept away a remote settlement in a western district, an official said. Nepal's monsoon toll tops 200 for most years, but experts say this year's landslips have been particularly deadly due to the continuing after-effects of the massive 2015 earthquakes and more road construction in  the country's Himalayan foothills

Images That Will Break Your Brain

 

Indian Black money stocked in crores in foreign banks

 

New Delhi: In relation to the anti-corruption move by India, Names of ten corrupter’s including a Politician and corporate houses were unveiled for the first time in four years on Friday. The committee charged HSBC bank for supporting these money laundering banking transactions with Swiss Banks.
The IAC members daringly exposed that the Ambani brothers and Anu Tandon, congress MP stocked crores of rupees in Swiss banks bank on a list of account holders in HSBC banks operating in Switzerland.  The list that was released by the French government to India revealed no name and the matter is yet to be resolved over court.
Manmohan Singh’s government was also accused of guilty, for not charging on the banks involving in hawala transactions, by the members of IAC as this is a biggest threat for the economic status of the country.
When IAC members, Kejriwal and Prashant Bhushan spoke to the press, they voiced” These banks have made easy for people to open foreign bank accounts from the comforts of the home, they collect money from people’s residence and deposit its equivalent in dollars and Euros with the bank” This may also happen in the case of spreading terror within the country by maundering terrorist money, drug and ransom money, he added.
The activists also demanded to close the bank, and its employees to quit for the interest of the country with immediate arrest of those directly involved with this money laundering issues. Kejriwal also noted that Mukesh Ambani personally visited the ministry to not raid Reliance and he would compensate the deal with money. He also came out with a solution for this economic threat that Indians also enact a law enforcing foreign banks to give a list of Indian Account holder’s names

How to make Pakistanis save.....

 

How to make Pakistanis save.....

 Basic economics suggests that if a country’s saving rate is below its investment rate it will always find it difficult to achieve stable and sustainable growth. Except for a few years since our independence, we have struggled to get beyond a single-digit saving rate. The gross saving rate as of June 30, 2020, was 8.4 per cent. This rate is low when compared to South Asian countries.India is at 29.44pc, Bangladesh is at 24.75pc and Nepal at 36.2pc. According to a Gallup survey commissioned by the State Bank of Pakistan, 64pc of the survey respondents stated that they save either in cash or informal savings. Given the low level of absolute savings, the inference is that the bulk save in cash, however nominal the saving amount may be. This conclusion is further strengthened by the fact that Pakistan also has the highest currency-to-deposit ratio, namely 36.2pc in the region.

This Rs6.3 trillion — printed yet not within banks or other formal investment vehicles — is where the solution to increasing our saving rate lies. Bringing this cash into the formal economy will reap immense benefits. If the cash in circulation was reduced by Rs1tr, it would lead to a Rs3tr increase in the national deposit base due to the bank multiplier effect.

In order to achieve our Rs1tr objective of bringing cash into the formal economy we must adopt the customer lens, review the customer journey and the commercial returns. The irony is that Pakistanis save, they just don’t save within the formal system: 23pc via the committee mechanism, 16pc in gold and another 11pc through livestock. If we could institutionalise these savings mechanisms, provide a better return and easier customer journey for those who want to save through the formal banking instructions we would start to crack our low saving rate problem.

The irony is that people save, just not within the formal system: 23pc via the committee mechanism, 16pc in gold and another 11pc through livestock

The committee system is an informal mechanism for people to save. It is popular in emerging markets around the world as it does not require either a bank account and is without any interest component. Let’s say ten people get together, each contributes Rs 1,000 per month for 10 months. Every month there is a pool of Rs 10,000 which one individual gets on the basis of a lucky draw or reverse auction. This is a cash transaction as each member contributes Rs1,000 in cash and it is unlikely that the monthly Rs10,000 recipient deposits this amount in a bank account. The Gallup study earlier alluded to suggests that a material amount of savings may be though the committee system as opposed to cash under the pillow.

We can start by firstly digitising this process. Instead of the 10 individuals meeting or one individual collecting physical funds, all 10 download an app which caters for this service. The app allows them to instantly open a mobile wallet by simply sending an SMS. It populates their account though either linking an existing bank account or depositing cash at any of the 90,000 branchless banking agents. It also allows them to transfer money in real-time to an individual who is that month’s beneficiary. The beneficiary can then hopefully use the funds to make an online utility bill payment, school fees, e-commerce purchases or physically withdraw the funds from a branchless banking agent.

From the customer lens, a service which is user friendly has been provided. From the country’s perspective, cash has been brought in the formal economy.

A more advanced version of the solution envisages a platform where all of the above-mentioned services are provided with one major addition. The platform provider underwrites the performance risk of the committee members. Imagine 10 people in 10 different cities, who do not know each other, but wish to participate in a committee to save are brought together by the platform provider after screening them to ensure its credit criteria is met. The platform provider, using advanced credit underwriting techniques, guarantees that each individual will pay their contribution for the duration of the committee. In this version, social capital to ensure monthly contributions is replaced by the guaranty of the platform provider.

Pakistanis, as is the case with other South Asians, are partial to savings in gold. Pakistan in the last fiscal year imported 273kg of gold, worth $11.9 million which translates to billions of rupees. About 99pc of the gold imported is converted to jewellery and used as ornaments as well as a medium of savings for the bottom of the pyramid.

The World Gold Council estimates an annual consumption of 150 to 170 tonnes annually. As there is no regulatory oversight for the purchase of gold, most of these transactions are in cash and do not necessarily enter the formal economy. Now imagine an app that provides fractional gold purchases — meaning Rs 100 denomination — provides a market-based buy and sell price and instant liquidity. An app that only allows purchase and redemption through a bank account with full know-your-customer and anti-money laundering screening. The customer gold account is credited with the grams they buy and physical delivery is available when one gram is achieved, although liquidity, i.e. ability to sell, is available in real-time. A solution like this would bring the ability to save in gold on a fractional basis, provide liquidity, transparency and security and, most importantly, start to bring cash transactions to the formal economy.

Pakistanis save but not with financial institutions as the medium of savings offered by them does not meet their needs. When banks and fintechs start viewing the savings need through the customer lens then a behavioural change can take place and informal savings can be moved to formal ones: the roadmap is available. What is now required is the will.

Getting funding

 

Wednesday, September 9, 2020

Start your new business

Getting funding

Option 1: Funding from investors

Investors can give you funding to start your business or help take it to the next stage. This type of funding may take the form of venture capital or angel investing.

 Venture capitalists may offer loans to businesses in exchange for partial ownership and/or an active role in the company. Each venture capitalist and angel investor has their own criteria and requirements for making an investment. But no matter who you ask for an investment, be prepared for the investor to carefully review your business plan, finances and experience.

Option 3: Self-financing Using your own money may be an option. Perhaps you tap into your savings, money from your current job, or a retirement account. If you’re a homeowner, you may be able to use your home to take out a new loan. Self-financing offers you the greatest control over your business, but it may be riskier.

Option 1: Getting a small business loan Many financial institutions offer loans for starting or running a small business. Be sure to shop around to compare interest rates, repayment terms and loan amounts. When you apply for a loan, lenders may require you to show your business plan and a variety of financial documents. These could include bank statements and tax returns from the previous few years. If you’re starting a new business, your own finances and credit could be a factor in the lender’s decision.

Financial institutions: Your financial institution will likely have a variety of options to help you fund a business, including loans or business credit products. You’ll want to have a business plan, estimate of startup costs, and business projection completed to help a bank understand why offering you a loan is a good idea.

Alternative lenders: If funding from a bank isn’t available, you’ve still got options. You could explore crowdfunding, peer-to-peer lending, or look into micro-lending. Alternative lenders could also include friends or family that are interested in investing in your business.

Dollar inflows thru banking channels jump........

Sunday, September 27, 202

Dollar inflows thru banking channels jump........

KARACHI: Inflows of foreign exchange through banking channels remained high in September which may increase the remittances up to $2 billion, said bankers and money changers.

Currency experts said the inflows of banking channels was high due to at least four reasons that forced the overseas Pakistanis to send their money only through banks.

“Closure of commercial flights compelled all the remitters to adopt banking channels to send their money,” said Forex Association of Pakistan President Malik Bostan, adding that it has also stopped currency smuggling.

He said that due to coronavirus, movement of Pakistanis living abroad has been curtailed which in turn has redirected inflows towards formal channels. “They used to bring thousands of dollars in their bags instead of sending them through the banking system,” he said.

While bankers are also witnessing higher inflows, they were reluctant to give any definite figure for the total value sent through banking channels in September.

“The passage of Financial Action Task Force bills from National Assembly and Senate has greatly reduced inflows through hundi and hawala. This foreign exchange is also coming through banking channels,” said a banker dealing with currencies in the interbank market.

Earlier, dealers in the open market had said that illegal money changers, who were in thousands across the country, disappeared from the trading business which helped banks receive higher inflows.

The country received increased remittances in the first two months of FY21. According to the State Bank of Pakistan Governor Reza Baqir in the monetary policy meeting on Monday, they came on the back of orderly exchange rate conditions as well as supportive steps taken by the government and SBP under the Pakistan Remittance Initiative.

Despite high remittances, the exchange rate did not improve in favour of the rupee. However, currency dealers and bankers maintained that due to rising inflows and continued current account surplus in FY21, the rupee-dollar parity remained almost stable.

“The current account surplus in July and August stabilised the exchange rate and will continue to help the country,” said Bostan, adding that exchange companies are depositing higher amount of dollars into the banks. The open markets are doing almost one-sided business as buyers make up just 10 per cent of the trading while the rests are sellers.